When I first found out I was pregnant, I felt terrified and alone, I felt as if I couldn’t trust anyone. At that time—1993—the only available resource to me, when I suspected pregnancy, was a phone book. After cracking the book open, I stumbled upon the Christian Family Services hotline and called as soon as my boss left for dinner break. The news of my pregnancy didn’t reach my family until four months later when my clothing no longer had a proper fit.
Oddly enough, my mother handed me the card of a counselor at an adoption agency and when I glanced at it, I discovered it was Susan Timmons at Christian Family Services: the same woman who heard my cries on the phone just a few months earlier.
I placed my son for adoption in 1994, at the age of seventeen, while I was a student attending high school in Overland Park, Kansas. Through Christian Family Services, I found a prospective family that I felt fit the hopes and aspirations I had dreamed of for my son. We met soon after and they told me they’d keep his birth name in honor of me: Tyler Drew.
My adoption story has been as public as my pregnancy was to the naked eye.
Read the rest of Lori’s story on Brave Love’s website, a pro-adoption movement dedicated to changing the perception of adoption by acknowledging birth moms for their brave decision. And see the video below…